This invention relates to an apparatus for feeding a continuous form and cutforms which can be mounted on and removed from the main body of a business machine and is unitized with a continuous-form cutting means, or cutter.
Up to now, in expensive printers such as high-speed electrophotographic printers, there have been only printers dedicated to continuous forms and those dedicated to cutforms, and a user wanting to print on both types of forms has needed to purchase the two dedicated machines, which imposed a large burden on the user.
In small-sized impact terminal printers, a paper feed unit dedicated to cutforms, which is separately sold as an automatic sheet feeder mechanism and can be mounted on and removed from the main body of a printer, and a paper ejecting tractor dedicated to continuous forms are used. If the user purchases the necessary feed units, he can print on both continuous forms and cutforms with a single printer. However, the user or the operator must change the feed units by mounting and removing them one by one, depending on the kind of the form to be printed upon. Also, in switching from a continuous form to cutforms, the operator is required to manually cut and remove the continuous form.
The Japanese Published Unexamined Patent Application No. 57-38175 discloses a printer provided with a mechanism for feeding a continuous form and manually inserted cutforms in the printer main body, but it does not disclose a unitized form feeding unit at all. Such a printer will result in the user who is satisfied with a form feeding mechanism for either continuous forms or cutforms purchasing an unnecessary feed mechanism for the other type of form, which is rather expensive. Moreover, the above-mentioned application discloses a cutter which can cut off the continuous forms after being printed so that they can be used as accounting slips, but it does not suggest a construction which can automatically cut a continuous form in response to an electrical signal for the purpose of form changing.
In the field of copying machines, a unitized paper feed unit is disclosed in the Japanese Utility Model Registration Publication No. 62-7634, but an apparatus for feeding cutforms and a continuous form, which is the object of this invention, is not mentioned, and even handling a continuous form is not suggested at all.
For copying machines using a roll paper, the Japanese Utility Model Registration Publication Nos. 52-5650 and 53-33562 are known, but in either of these, the roll paper is periodically and inevitably cut and fed to the copying portion. Thus, the technology in the field of copying machines suggests nothing about feeding a continuous form, a concept usually specific to the field of printers, to the printing portion. Incidentally, the above-mentioned two utility model registration publications suggest nothing about unitizing the paper feeding portion.
As described above, because, up to now, there was no printer which could be used by freely changing a continuous form and cutforms without operator intervention, and particularly because, as a printer to be directly connected to a computer, there was no printer which could handle both continuous forms and cutforms with one unit, the user needed to purchase two printers to print on both continuous forms and cutforms.
Also, a small-sized impact terminal printer which can handle both continuous forms and cutforms required operator intervention for changing the forms.
On the other hand, treatment of both continuous forms and cutforms in one printer resulted in a user who used only one type of form having to incur an extra expense for the unnecessary mechanism. Also there was fear of incomplete functionality if an attempt at functional services was made in a limited space.